


Other Various Parts

by greenripper (OracleGlass)



Category: Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-29
Updated: 2012-02-29
Packaged: 2017-10-31 21:40:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/348629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OracleGlass/pseuds/greenripper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Once upon a time, I had principles."</p><p>When the world is changing, sometimes you have to cling to what remains still. Set after <i>Ghost Story</i> and before <i>Cold Days</i>. </p><p>"...what protects our hearts<br/>just a cage of rib bones and other various parts"<br/>(Ingrid Michaelson, "Breakable"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Other Various Parts

Everyone thinks that it was Harry’s death that broke me, but I know how early the cracks had started to form. People tell me (god, not just other people, other police officers) that I had too much of a black and white take on things, and didn’t I notice that we were living in a grey, grey world? As if integrity was something to cling to only when convenient. And then I met Harry, and learned about even deeper shades of grey, and blacker shades of black, and precious little white.

It’s been a long, slow slide, and although I clung to hope, I think I knew somewhere deep down that it would all fall apart. I had seen plenty of cops before me go down that road, and most of them never saw the horrors I did over one long weekend with Harry, let alone years of backing him up. Fuck, I figure that’s what led my daddy to put the gun up to his head - he finally couldn’t make “right” and “necessary” line up anymore with what he saw out there.

Archangels want me to take up a holy sword, a weapon of faith. I guess I fooled them. There’s barely any faith left in me - it’s just a tiny little acorn that rattles when you shake it, instead of the oak tree I used to shelter under. And I’m getting older. Slower. Won’t be able to keep this up for much longer, and meanwhile Harry is just growing into his strength. How soon before I turn from useful ally into a millstone? Into something he’d have to protect?

When Marcone made his offer to me, I wanted to kill him. And he saw that, damn him, and he understood, even worse. I looked into those hard eyes of his and saw a tiny spark of something that looked an awful lot like compassion, and I wanted to slam his head into the wall and leave with some dignity intact. And then I felt something tear open inside me, and I found myself agreeing, with my voice sounding funny and far away. We shook hands on it.

He’s a perfect gentleman, for a murdering crime lord. He kept me going those long months when I knew Harry had to be dead, but refused to believe it. He helped me keep my city as safe as possible, even if I couldn’t call myself a cop while I did it. Even if I was working hand in hand with someone I once thought was the biggest evil I’d ever see in my lifetime. Until I learned that there are other things crawling out of the dark. Marcone has moved down my list quite a few spots. Doesn’t make it any easier to swallow, though.

Then Harry was back, a fucking bothersome ghost, and then he was gone again. No time to form scar tissue over any of the wounds. Soon after his ghost disappeared, we started to hear, through our sources, that he was somehow miraculously alive again, more powerful than ever, running around being Mab’s errand boy. The Winter Knight. Deeper in, farther away. Too busy to drop a line. And all the while, Marcone watched me with those knowing eyes of his, and he never pitied me for being left behind, and he helped our straggly little band of misfits keep the dark pushed back from Chicago.

Once upon a time, I had principles. The list of things I would never do was really, really long. It’s a lot shorter now.

I’m too tired. It’s only pure stubbornness keeping me going now. Stubbornness and knowing that people rely on me, on us, to keep them safe. I’ll make that deal, even if it breaks me apart.

*****

She doesn’t know how remarkable she is. Very few ordinary humans have any sort of will at all, let alone one that drives them forward with such ferocity. I have it, of course, and I recognise it in Karrin Murphy. Even Gard recognizes it, and when a valkyrie respects your fighting spirit, well...

The close cropped hair emphasises the gauntness of her cheekbones. She’s like a stripped sword now, if you’ll excuse the obvious cliche. She’s beautiful, and exhausted, and terrified, and she refuses to give up fighting the monsters that want to take over this city - I have kindly been granted an exception, which I suspect is only temporary. I know she and Dresden had something together, although whether or not they were intimate is something even my network of informers couldn’t unearth. Frankly, it doesn’t matter. They had a bond of incredible strength, and his death wounded her beyond telling. His survival tore open everything again. He’s been gifted with power far beyond what he had, by beings who are just barely explicable to mortals. He’s moving further away - even I am a quaint enemy now, and I half-suspect he only takes me seriously because we have such a long history together.

He’s left Karrin behind, and I have stepped into the breech. Shaking hands with me was one of the hardest things she’s ever done in her life, I could see that in the set of her mouth and the faint tremor in her fingers as I held her hand in mine.

Surprisingly, I have kept every promise I made to her.

***  
I hate to admit it, but fair’s fair - Marcone is damn good in a fight. He has some strange ideas about leadership that I never expected to see in a mob boss; he belongs in the Iliad, not modern-day Chicago. I suspect that’s why the title of Baron works so well for him, why he grasps so many of the arcane supernatural rules that constantly baffle me because they make no sense. Purity of heart aside, I find myself playing Lancelot to his Arthur, and it’s weird. What’s even stranger is that I’m relatively content. He gives me the room to be what I need to be.

We were taking out a stronghold of another group trying to sneak into Chicago, hoping that we’d be too distracted by the Fomors to notice them setting up shop. I don’t know what they called themselves, but they looked like every ogre out of every fairy tale illustration, and they were brutally strong, if not so much on the magic-using side of things. Marcone and I faced the last one together, while our team fanned out to release the humans that were scheduled for tomorrow’s lunch, and we killed it together. In its death throes, it kicked out at Marcone, catching his knee, before I put three rounds into its head. I propped Marcone up as we limped our way out. For the next month he tried to talk to me through intermediaries, to get some distance between us, I think. Hell with that, I won’t be passed messages like a kid playing Telephone. So he had to talk to me again. And it stayed weird, but I was ok with it. Mostly.  
***

She’s a magnificent battle tactician. Alexander the Great could have conquered the world in far less time had she been organizing things. The two of us planned out the storming of a Fomor stronghold tucked away in an inconspicuous house in the middle of a neighborhood quietly going to seed. Her hedge witches from the Paranet kept the sounds of automatic fire from so much as disturbing the sleep of the people around us, and Gard kept the Fomor magic-workers busy while Murphy and I killed them, one by one, and dismantled the sacrificial altar and whatever ritual had been centered on it. Gard refused to tell me any details about it, and from the set of her mouth I knew it had to be bad. Very bad. Murphy knew it, too. We had won, but how much longer could we keep going? And what were the costs if we failed?

It must have been purest exhaustion that spurred me to be so weak. After we were done, covered in blood and bruises, I turned to Karrin and asked her to come back home with me. To talk, I hastily added, except we both knew the second I said it that it wasn’t true. By then, it was beyond my dignity to to tell her wait, I’ve changed my mind, this is a terrible mistake.

She must have been equally exhausted, because she said yes. As we were driven to my house, the streetlights passed over her face in bands of light and dark, and I could not read her expression, or guess what lay in the silence between us.

****

Marcone’s house is everything you’d expect of a crime lord’s sanctum. Guards patrol discretely, and there are some interesting security systems that I’d bet aren’t available for anyone not using Monoc. The edges of the world seemed to waver in and out as Marcone and I, now shed of his bodyguards, walked through several showplace rooms, until we reached the kitchen. While everything else I had seen before might as well had been sealed in plastic, this seemed like a place he might actually spend time. I sat down at the heavy wooden table in the center of the room, and watched tiredly as he put the kettle on. I could smell the residue of the fight on myself, even after he placed a mug of something fragrant and pepperminty in front of me. The warm mug hurt to hold, but in a good way. I clung to it.

“Drink up. Gard’s special concoction for post-battle depression. Although she usually puts it in mead. I don’t advise trying it - it’s absolutely vile.”

“I want to say horrible things about you not being suited for domesticity, Marcone. But I feel like we’re past sniping at each other. I’m too damn tired.” I sipped at the tea despite the heat, and felt the warmth spread from it, like the burn you get from good scotch. Marcone followed suit, draining his mug and setting it to one side. He had a streak of blood by his ear.

Unexpectedly, he put his face in his hands. God, an expression of weakness from Marcone? Maybe the world was ending. Except that was too close to home to be funny. He looked absolutely spent, and Johnny Marcone was not supposed to look anything but smugly superior. It gave me the shivers, and they multiplied when he lifted his head and looked directly at me.

“Ms. Murphy...Karrin...I am sybaritic about few things in my life. But upstairs, there’s a shower you could fit a circus troop into, and an unlimited supply of hot water. I’m going there right now. If you would like to join me, I would enjoy it very much.”

My heart stopped. I made some sort of noise, and finally managed to stutter, “Jesus fucking Christ, Marcone, you don’t drop gentle hints, do you?”

He shook his head, still staring directly at me. Had he been Harry, we’d have been neck-deep in a soul gaze right now, looking at the raw essence of who we both were. But he wasn’t Harry. Harry wasn’t Harry, not anymore. Harry was off killing people who pissed off the-queen-his-mistress, Harry was walking around in blizzards without a sweater, Harry was never going to be the same Harry I knew and could have loved. Everyone was dead or changed utterly, and I was sitting in the crime lord of Chicago’s kitchen, drinking tea and thinking about...thinking about...

I stood up, and he rose to his feet along with me. He walked around the table, extended his hand, and I took it, feeling the warm, rough texture of his skin underneath mine. Hand in hand, like two lost children, we went up the stairs. Halfway up, he turned, leaned me into the wall, and kissed me like someone drowning, and I wound my arms around his neck and kissed back, biting his lip, scratching at him, feeling him press the length of his body against mine.

We never made it to the shower. We didn’t even make it to his bed. He had my shirt off as we got into the bedroom, my bra off two steps beyond that. I had my hands under his t-shirt at the same time, sliding my hands across the flat planes of his stomach and counting his scars. He tumbled me backwards onto the floor and I dragged him down with me, my hands at the nape of his neck. His hair was too short to tug at, so I satisfied myself by kneading my fingertips down his back as he bent his head to kiss along my neck. “Christ, Karrin,” he mumbled against my jaw, and I trembled at the tone in his voice. He closed his mouth around a nipple, his hand capturing the other one, pinching it as it stiffened. I wriggled underneath him, swamped in sensation, panting.

He rolled off me long enough to fumble open his belt and pants, then unfasten mine, yanking them downwards with enough force that my panties slid off as well. He knelt between my legs, and slid into me, and I wrapped my legs around his waist to pull him in deeply. He bent forward and kissed me again, his tongue sliding against mine as his hips drove down, mine lifting to meet him. I slid my hands down to the firm clench of his ass, urging him deeper into me. He grunted, bit my shoulder, and came, and gasping, I followed, tucking my face into the curve of his neck.

We lay on the floor for a few minutes, until I realized I couldn’t breathe with him on top of me, and elbowed him off. He rolled smoothly to the side, and interlaced his hand with mine. He was laughing softly, and I felt a sudden burst of panic, but before I could do anything he brought my hand to his mouth and kissed my knuckles.

“I believe I promised you a shower, Karrin. Let’s try this again.” He got up, boosted me to my feet, and led me into the vast cavern he called a bathroom.

His shower was everything he had promised. Needle sprays of hot water stung me as we kissed like teenagers, hasty and fumbling. His body was wiry, leanly muscled, and covered with scars - twisted, ropey ones, circular ones clearly made by bullets. I had them too, just as many, and he ran his fingers and mouth along every one. He slid soapy hands around my breasts, making me gasp and squirm with pleasure, and in return I traced the curve of his ass, drawing him against me so his cock slid between my thighs, making him swear under his breath. He pushed me back onto the tiled bench that ran across the length of the shower and spread my legs, leaning in with fingers and tongue. I rocked backwards, eyes closed, the water running down my face. He teased me mercilessly, his tongue tracing every inch, his hands clamped down on my thighs to hold me as I arched myself against his mouth. He slid a finger inside me as his mouth closed around my clit, and I came, crying out, completely lost.

He bundled me into a huge towel, and I followed him back into the bedroom, which I now had time to notice was as orderly as a soldier’s. He pushed me backwards into the mattress and took his time kissing me, his fingers tracing the rim of my ear. I relaxed into it, exploring his mouth, tasting the residue of the peppermint tea. He moved to slide into me again, but I rolled so he wound up on his back with me on top. He arched an eyebrow and I made a mock-stern face at him. He laughed - one of his rare deep chuckles that I’d only heard once before, and not under what you would call similar circumstances.

I took the lead, pushing him backwards into his own pillows and sliding my way up him. I braced my hands on his chest and lowered myself slowly onto his cock, enjoying the open O of his mouth as I clenched around him. His hands found my hips, roamed upwards to tease my breasts, slid down again to cup my ass as I rode him, slowly, slowly, slowly, my hips moving in a figure eight, stretching things out until they broke and I fell forward against his chest.

We slept in a tangle. I woke once, my arm asleep from being pinned under his side, and drowsily peered at him. Johnny Marcone, asleep and unawares. He should have looked more innocent, younger, more unburdened, but he didn’t. He just looked like who he was. I fell asleep before I could puzzle it out.


End file.
